Kyle Lamb’s Personal VTAC M&P15

Kyle Lamb is the founder of firearms accessories and training company Viking Tactics (VTAC). VTAC is in the business of making no nonsense accessories for AR-15s as well as training and consulting for law enforcement, military and security organizations. If you don’t already know who Lamb is, we’ll break his bad-assness down for you. Lamb retired as a Sergeant Major after 20 plus years in the US Army, 18 of them in the Special Forces. (You guys ever heard of “Delta”?) He’s been deployed to all parts of the world to kick butt including Iraq, Bosnia, and Somalia. Yep, that’s right, he was there at the Battle of Mogadishu, more commonly known as the “Black Hawk Down” incident. The man has experienced some serious action and he brings those experiences with him in his training as well as products.

We caught up with him to take a look at the AR-15 he personally runs. Lamb’s focus of his build is to keep his carbine light in weight. It is based off of a Smith & Wesson M&P15 with a 16-inch light weight profile barrel. He explains, “The barrel is light to help with quickly driving the weapon from target to target.” Lamb further describes, “The barrel has been melonited which helps with wear and does not degrade accuracy as you see with most chrome lined barrels. The barrel is 1-8 twist which helps to stabilize heavier bullets but will also shoot 55 grainers perfectly.”

The rifle features a mid-length gas system to help slow the bolt carrier velocity when compared to a standard carbine length gas system. This helps with both the reliability of the weapon and decrease felt recoil. An added benefit of the mid-length gas system is that when a sound suppressor is added to the gun, there is less over gas issues that can be experienced with guns that have shorter gas systems.

Lamb chose to outfit his carbine with a VTAC Extreme BattleRail in the 13-inch length. This super light and stiff free float tube is a collaboration project between VTAC & Troy Industries and features Picatinny rail sections that can be placed at various parts of the tube. We found this feature makes the tube very versatile while keeping it very light. The overall diameter of the tube is small and even those with smaller hands can get a good grasp of it. The extra length of the 15-inch rail is nice for those with a longer reach or when shooting from the modern isosceles stance.

In another collaboration, VTAC and Geissele Automatics have produced the Super “V” trigger. This trigger is a single stage type trigger that has no adjustment screws to come loose during operation. This trigger allows the shooter to have a competition quality crisp 4-4.5 lb pull weight with the reliability of a simple combat trigger. (The “V” stands for Viking Tactics by the way.)

Perhaps one of the best known VTAC products, the 2-point VTAC Wide Padded Sling is attached to Lamb’s rifle with the help of two push button heavy duty quick detach swivels and the VTAC Low Profile Sling Mount (LPSM) on the front of the gun. The sling is comfortable to use and easy to adjust. (This writer has had one for years and loves it.) The VLTOR IMOD Buttstock holds the sling on the rear with its built in QD sockets and features a good cheekweld while keeping the gun light.

For low-light or no light situations, the polymer VTAC Light Mount is seen here mounted with a Surefire Viking Tactics L4 weaponlight. The VTAC Light Mount can mount just about any flashlight with a body diameter of 0.8-inch up to 1.0-inch. The L4 weaponlight is actually a hybrid of two popular Surefire lights and combines Surefire’s KX2C (LED) 200 lumen output head with a Z68 Scout light tailcap. This makes for a very ergonomic and robust package. A Mini-L4 weaponlight is also available for even greater weight savings and a very usable 110 lumens.

Up front, we found a flash suppressor and “blast director” on this weapon that was developed by Smith & Wesson. Lamb says, “[While] it is a great flash hider, I normally do replace mine with Surefire flash suppressor to accommodate my sound suppressors.”

For forward control, the rifle is fitted with VTAC’s new Quick Detatch Ultralight Vertical Grip (UVG). This vertical grip weighs only 3.8 ounces and can accommodate 2 AA or 2 CR123 batteries without any rattling thanks to an internal o-ring.

The optics found on the gun is a Leupold HAMR with Deltapoint on top. It is mounted with the DLOC-HAMR mount from Alamo Four Star. He also has a Leupold MK 6 1-6 34mm Scope that finds its way on top of this rifle when the situations call for it.

All in all we find this to be a real solid build. It figures, look whose gun it is. Kyle Lamb and VTAC certainly stand behind their parts and are not shy about demonstrating their uses. To see this gun and Kyle in action, take a look at his series of videos found on the VTAC YouTube channel. (http://www.youtube.com/user/VikingTactics)